we tend to say that your value is what you earn People who say that aren’t expressing a basic understanding of economics: the reason people have jobs is so tha

we tend to say that your value is what you earn People who say that aren’t expressing a basic understanding of economics: the reason people have jobs is so that employers can capture the surplus value produced by their workers. Stay at home parents produce incredible surplus value. It’s just not captured by an employer, it’s captured by the children. That’s the reason we don’t pay them: children don’t have any money to pay their parents. It’s also why I think a lot of people get offended when the topic of parenting is brought up as unpaid labour. Money is a vulgar thing. If you were enjoying a delicious meal at your in-laws’ house and at the end you said “that was wonderful” and handed your mother-in-law a twenty dollar bill, you would really offend her. Anyway, instead of paying the parents for raising their kids, we pay the kids when they get old enough to work. If we were to start paying parents for the contributions their kids make to society, wouldn’t we have to pay the kids less? Don’t young people have it hard enough as it is right now? The real reason people are struggling now is because the cost of housing, education, and medical care have gone through the roof. It used to be that a single-earner household, with the husband working in a factory and the wife at home with 4 kids, could support a nice house in the suburbs with two cars in the garage and a white picket fence. Now we’ve got both parents with university degrees working white-collar jobs and they can barely afford to raise 2 kids. If we want to help new parents, we should find ways to make housing, education, and medical care affordable.